Description

“Time Runs Out” is a melancholic and expressive track, sitting at Precision Level 4 because I could not for the life of me figure out how to throw in a Dorian section and still maintain the purpose of making the listener feel emotional.

It is for the fictitious game called “Time Gears”, a melancholic but cozy narrative-based action-adventure game that takes place on a floating steampunk island of machinery titled, “The Heaven’s Mass”. This island hosts a strong dictatorship centered around the idea of utopia and eternal bliss, but has gone somewhat corrupt. You play as an 8-year old schoolgirl named May who suffers a severe and fatal brain parasite. As May is rushed to the hospital, the Doctors decide on installing a piece of costly brain machinery of complex gears that would slow down the rate at which her brain eats itself, but not entirely prevent it. May’s parents reluctantly agreed to let their daughter live for the expected five more days, and promised to make those five days the best of her life. As May travels around The Heaven’s Mass, she says her deepest farewells to her closest friends and strongest relationships. May’s family then drives themselves bankrupt in order to make May’s final days incredible. They go as far as to ration their food and provide May with the best and expensive meals. As time goes on, May’s brain begins to forget and destroy beloved memories.

As May takes her final breaths on her deathbed, she hums Mother’s Lullaby, a melody that her mother sang to her all the time, making it her final memory as May’s brain collapses and dies.

“Time Runs Out” plays in the ending credits cutscene, distinctly referencing Mother’s Lullaby as the main melody, and displays the parent’s grief and mourning for their child, emotional flashbacks of lost memories, the parents ravaging the last of their money, and dying to malnutrition and starvation in the streets.

Here is how I handled the Precision Levels:

1 - A piece of music for the end credits of a video game:

As explained before, “Time Runs Out” plays in the ending credits cutscene.

2 - The music should be nostalgic at first, then become energetic:

The song references Mother’s Lullaby (or the main theme), which at this point in time will be familiar and emotional at this point in the game. It picks up the expressive-ness and produces a heart-wrenching climax near the end of the piece, which is where the “energetic” comes in.

3 - It must contain a distinct melody that could be derived from a leitmotif:

Again, it contains Mother’s Lullaby, the main theme of “Time Gears”.

4 - The game is called Time Gears, an action-adventure game set in a steampunk world:

It is called “Time Gears”, and it is a steampunk action-adventure game, but relatively more chill and narrative-focused.

5 - The music must contain a distinct section of at least 16 measures composed entirely in Dorian mode:

I couldn’t figure out how to incorporate a section with Dorian without messing up the emotional structure of the piece so I just stuck with Level 4.

I hope you enjoy listening to this piece as much as I enjoyed making it!

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Creative Decisions

I wanted to actually encapsulate a feeling of nostalgia by introducing a bright and cheerful melody played on a gorgeous piano as the outside world’s ambience of machinery and gears sounded faintly in the back. On the second instance of the melody, I brought in some faint strings and added the bass at a quiet volume, slightly changing the underlying chord progression to make it more melancholic. After this section, it goes into a mourning state with a run-off piano section with no clear structure before concluding the section with a descending progression, bringing the bass and the dynamics up before introducing the drums and the lead and slowing down dramatically. After the build-up, it drops out, removes the reverb, plays a drum fill to introduce the regular tempo back before dropping into an incredibly lush and emotionally charged rendition of the main theme. After a final climactic rise in the melody, it ends on a soft piano, concluding the journey of “Time Runs Out”.

After making this song, I can confidently say that this is one of the best pieces of music I have ever composed and I’m quite happy that I made it for my first OST Jam.

Here’s the day-by-day playout of the creation of the track:

Day 1

When the theme was announced, I was excited to begin development, and I spent the majority of the first day coming up with ideas. This proved to be quite challenging considering the vague prompts provided and I wanted to do as many levels as I could, so I had to expand on the game itself. This is where I came up with the idea for the game concept which is described in the previous section. Once I had a solid concept, I could actually come up with the music for it and how I wanted it to feel and I wrote the piano outline. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a reasonable spot to throw in the Level 5, so I moved down to Level 4, which was fine with me. It would have ruined the emotional impact by making it feel adventurous and heroic rather than the intended emotions of grief, intense flashbacks of May’s beloved memories, and the collapse of the family after her death.

Day 2

After listening to the outline, I determined that it would fit if it was an electronic orchestral so I recorded some strings and the bass. I then added machinery and train whistle ambience in the back to provide the listener a step into the steampunk world that can be heard within the hospital room, also adding in the drop with lush synth pads, a rock kit with Blood Overdrive, and a placeholder lead. I had finished the first draft and I was done for the day, restricting myself to only listening to the song to hear any changes I could make. There were a lot of things that needed to be fixed.

Day 3

I spent most of today’s session polishing, fixing the track, and enhancing the drop by automating out the reverbs right before the drop (which I think is incredibly cool) and changing the lead to my signature chiptune lead.

Day 4

I didn’t spend too much time working on the track, but I made the cover art, wrote the description for the itch.io page in a Google Docs, and fixed some tiny issues. The final fixes will be made tomorrow.

Day 5

For the final day, I didn't have much to do so I fixed the issues and released! Thank you all!